


Episode 9: Beun's Crew, Pt 1

by PitoyaPTx



Series: Clan Meso'a [9]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bounty Hunters, Clone Wars era, Dathomir Zabrak, F/M, Hutta, Hutts (Star Wars), Interspecies Romance, Mandalorian, Twi'leks (Star Wars), slavery in Star Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 04:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17932916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitoyaPTx/pseuds/PitoyaPTx
Summary: "It was glitz and glam and other things you can't wash off in the shower." ~LyseYou never know when opportunity will arrive.





	Episode 9: Beun's Crew, Pt 1

Teika stretched lightly in the orange glow filtering down from the window set high on the wall. Beams of harsh sunlight fell across his back like fiery scars, melting into the rough patches on his dusty-brown skin. He yawned and shook from head to toe, his green eyes tracing the outline of his roommates just now stirring to life. Jecho groaned and stretched under her blanket; Teika gently hooked his arms under her armpits and lifted her into a seated position. Once upright, she reached up to touch the sore spot on her right lekku, only to bring back a glitter and confetti coated hand. She sighed resignedly and lifted the blanket to her head, gently wiping away last night’s party from her skin. Lyse coughed; Teika listened to her mutter about the glitter still clinging to her stomach and chest. When she sat up, and the light hit her, Teika frowned. Her once golden skin seemed dull under the booze stains and confetti. Noticing his gaze, she smiled weakly.  
“Only two more days,” she gave him an unenthusiastic thumbs-up.  
“Yeah,” Jecho winced as Teika removed a feather stuck to her shoulder, “Two more days of hell.”  
“We’ve done these before,” he said, “and we’ve survived worse parties.”  
Lyse laughed, but it wasn’t out of amusement. “Remember when the twins were born?”  
Her companions groaned, Teika reached for his horns as if he could still feel the tight jewelry.  
“I thought we were going to dance ourselves to death,” Jecho thrust her palms against her cheeks and dragged her fingers down her face, “I mean, I knew a Hutt could party but-”  
“It was a nightmare,” Lyse pushed herself up onto her feet and swiped her lekku back over her shoulders, “This whole thing is a nightmare!”  
All three looked around the room: the rust-red walls, torn mattresses, hole-ridden blankets, bio-locked door compete with a slot for food trays, the stench wafting in from the beast pens down the hall…  
“Yeah but…” Jecho began, feeling defeated, “What more can we do?” 

Freshly pressed linens and piles of jewelry sat on the tables around the room. Attendants, some human some Twi’lek, came into the room looking just as frazzled as they had the past few days. A male, eyes bloodshot and reeking of cigar smoke, approached Jecho and sighed.  
“I see the scrub I gave you still isn’t working.”  
She shrugged, “Don’t think it was made for icing.”  
He sighed again and rubbed his temples, “Ok, I don’t have time for this. I’ll just have them...spruce you up a bit more. Talli,” he snapped to a woman across the room, making last minute changes to another dancer’s costume, “A bit more glitter and some more wax may do the trick.”  
“But-” Jecho began to protest, but he waved her away.  
“Hop to it, people, we only have one more hour before the guests wake up!”  
He scurried off, muttering something about “dirty aliens” and other things Jecho wished she didn’t have to hear on a daily basis. Lyse rolled her eyes and she and Jecho were taken away to the line of vanity tables set up against the far wall. Teika, as usual, was taken into a separate room with the other males.  
Coated from head to toe in a luminous lotion, sprayed with various cologne, and given silk trousers, each dancer was clothed and prepped by three attendants. Their owner, descendent of the Great Hutt, Fa'athra, sunk hundreds of credits into buying the most-fit Zabrak he could get his grubby hands on. Tired of being humiliated and bullied by other Hutt who laid claim to Hutta, the Fa'athra family never skimped on the extravagance. Everything they did was a ploy to one up the competition, including the slaves they owned. Teika and several warriors from his village were ambushed and sold into slavery. With no way of knowing what happened to them, he decided to form bonds with his fellow dancers to make up for his homesickness. So far, he’d grown close to Lyse and Jecho. The other Zabrak were so ashamed of their enslavement they hardly socialized with one another. Just a few weeks ago, one of them threw themselves into the Tukata pen out of desperation. Teika barely ate after witnessing that. He tried to push it out of his mind and focus on not fidgeting so his attendants could hook the tight golden hoops around his horns. From each hoop, they secured fine gold chains that draped across his head from one hoop to the next. By the end of it, he wore a crown of gold and tear-drops of jewels like a bipedal chandelier. The whole get-up was heavy, but that’s why Fa’athra chose the best of the best.  
Lyse similarly sat as still as possible as her attendants applied a heavy layer of makeup to cover her face and lekku tattoos. She stifled a sneeze; the fallout from the powerpuff caked her upper lip as they dabbed under her eyes. Jecho winced, wanting to tear her lekku away as they covered her tattoos. Thankfully none were on her face, it felt as though they were going to beat her raw every time they prepped her. Like Teika, they were rubbed down with lotion and given fresh sets of lingerie. Lyse had a hard time working her outfits. Tall, muscular, and broad shouldered, she sometimes looked like a male in a too-small bikini. Some patrons liked that. Lyse did not. Jecho, athletic but petite compared to her friend, often dealt with too-big clothing. Everyone, aside from the dancers, loved a good wardrobe malfunction. A ripping sound set Jecho’s heart at ease. No matter how uncomfortable, double sided tape was her best friend. Lyse and the other women were similarly taped up.  
Lekku, horns, and hair sparkling and shining, the women lined up at the double doors leading into the main hall beside their male counterparts. Teika softly nudged Lyse’s side with his elbow and gently ran his fingers between Jecho’s. For the next several hours, they’d dance until the patrons were too drunk to remain conscious all in the name of celebrating some mining deal between these Hutts and the Separatists. To be honest, none of the staff cared, they just wanted to survive the ordeal.  
“And here we go!” someone muttered behind Teika. He looked back over his shoulder and made eye contact with a young male human.  
“Vonni,” the man nodded to him.  
“Teika.”  
“Think we’ll recover?”  
“Heh..guess this is your first big party?”  
“Sprained wrist,” he held up his left hand, “Had me sit out the twins’ party.”  
“Lucky.”  
“Quiet!” one of the handlers shouted from the front of the line.  
Both men stood up straight and kept their gaze forward. Once the handler, a Rhodian with a cattle prod, looked away to field a question from one of the female dancers, Vonni tapped Teika’s arm.  
“The blue girl, the Twi’lek, do you know her?” he asked.  
Teika nodded slightly, “Why?”  
Vonni flushed, “I think she’s beautiful. Haven’t the guts to tell her though, but-”  
The doors slid aside and music filled the room.  
“We’ll talk later,” Teika quickly said over his shoulder before plastering the day’s smile on his face.  
Both lines paraded out into the main floor of the cantina and onto the various stages set around the room. They broke off into pairs save for the Zabrak whom Fa’athra often had stationed on their own like glittering trophies. Teika was immediately swarmed by the same women from last night, many of which were twice his age. He smiled politely and let them drag him over to their table so he could hear the same five stories about their wealth or their exploits they drunkenly told him the night before. Thanking the stars Fa’athra had a strict “look-but-don’t-touch” policy meant that them grabbing his arm was the only thing they could physically do to him. As they laid into him again about some trip they all took to Alderaan, Teika scanned the room for where Lyse and Jecho ended up. If he wasn’t a professional, he might have burst into laughter. Vonni and Jecho were together on the same platform in a jazzy-yet-sensual routine. Last night, the dancers who performed that very dance “accidentally” waltzed into the rancor pit. The delighted clapping of Fa'athra’s daughter meant that Vonni and Jecho were likely to survive. Vonni was flushed yet determined not to drop his partner, although Teika could tell how smitten he was with her. Jecho was professional as ever, being just as flirty with Vonni per the dance’s requirements as she was with the other patrons per Fa’athra’s requirements.  
As Jecho twirled away from or pressed up against Vonni, the patrons ooed and awed as he in turn ran his hands down her arms or traced her jaw with his fingers. On the other side of the room, Lyse was doing her strong-woman routine. The crowd favorite was her drink-and-lift bit where she’d finish an entire pint of the bar’s strongest liquor while holding any patron brave enough to participate over her head. Her handler, the zap-happy-Rhodian was at least good at limiting this trick to twice a night so Lyse could perform her other feats. Her favorite was to have a patron hang off her biceps as she curled them, mostly because it was a good workout. Both Teika and Jecho knew Lyse did it most of all to see the patron’s wives and girlfriends shoot daggers at her for impressing the men.  
Just as the cacophony of drunks met the crescendo of the music, Fa’athra clapped his hands.


End file.
